


Lose-Lose

by TrueColours



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: AU: Mal negotiates with Uma, Blades, Harry would never let that happen, M/M, Sexual Tension, Threats, Trust Kink, descendants 2: canon divergent, enemies to friends to ???, he may be a villain but he's got taste, hostage!Ben, mutual? pining, seriously you could cut the sexual tension with a knife, this entire fic is a callout post for Ben's beard in Descendants 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-29 00:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20072761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrueColours/pseuds/TrueColours
Summary: Harry is a master of creating lose-lose situations for his prisoners. Unfortunately for him, Ben enjoys being frightened.





	Lose-Lose

It’s hard to heat anything on the Isle. Constant cloud cover means few trees for fuel, and no clever solar work-rounds either. Most of the rubbish that comes over from Auradon is still too useful to burn. And fresh water isn’t in plentiful supply either, which is how Ben comes to be washing in a bucket of cold brine, in a cluttered cabin on the _Lost Revenge_.

He’s been on Uma’s ship for a week and a half. Mal had arrived before noon on the first day and told Uma straight that she couldn’t get the wand. A day was far too tight a turnaround, and since the debacle at his coronation it had been doubly protected anyway. She’d asked for time, or another plan. She’d apologised for forgetting about all the other villain kids who’d been left behind. She’d assured Uma that they both wanted the same thing. She’d begged for Ben’s life.

Uma had mulled that over for so long that Harry had pulled Ben back over the edge of the plank and onto _terra firma_, complaining that his arm was cramping up. Finally Uma had said,

‘Seems a waste to throw our best bit of leverage overboard for nothing.’

Since then, he’s been living in a kind of limbo. Uma’s accepted that she won’t be swapping him for a tool she can use; she’ll be swapping him for some sort of action or agreement, and she’ll probably need his input in working out what that is. Carlos and Jay protested at him being held hostage, but Ben isn’t sure that’s what he is. He’s not tied to the mast any more. Uma hasn’t sent any bits of him back to his father, and she tells Harry to _give it a rest_ whenever he looks like he might be thinking in that direction. She lets him sit across from her with his hands untied and say what he thinks she should do next, though so far she’s been slow to actually act on any of his ideas. Ben argues that holding him here isn’t winning her any friends at court, and that he could get more done for her from the mainland. Uma seems amused by the idea that anything she could do might win her friends at court, and she tells him that being on the Isle will help concentrate his mind. If he goes back home, what’s to stop him forgetting about her?

Ben can’t argue with that. He did forget.

‘Colder than you’re used to, princey?’ Harry calls from his seat in the corner of the cabin.

Ben has the use of his hands and the run of the ship. He also has a constant escort.

It’s one of those lose-lose questions. Harry presents him with a half-dozen a day. If he says that the water isn’t colder than he’s used to, he’s clearly a liar. If he says it is, he’s soft. The fact that his bath is being supervised is another case in point. If he grits his teeth and washes in full view, Harry wins. If he shows that he minds being seen undressed, Harry wins. So far, Ben has just been going with the truth. The truth is that he’s uncomfortable and doesn’t know how to pretend otherwise, so he’s washing with a ragged towel held awkwardly around his waist, while Harry watches him the way a well-fed cat watches a chicken coop.

‘It is cold,’ he says, slapping the washcloth onto his arm with a wince.

‘It’s good for your system, cold water,’ Harry says. He’s lounging on a stool, leaning back against the trestle table, hook on his knees, leather coat hanging open around him. ‘Must be why we Islanders are all so damned healthy.’

‘You should come and try it,’ Ben suggests, balancing on one leg to scrub his foot.

‘Buy me dinner first,’ Harry says. ‘I don’t undress at the drop of a hat, not even for kings.’

Ben’s cheeks burn. He supposes that’s what he gets for trying to answer back to Harry, whose brain always seems to be several layers of implication ahead of his own. As Ben straightens up, Harry’s eyes meet his for a second: _point to me_.

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Ben says.

‘You’re no fun,’ Harry replies, toying with his hook.

The rest of the crew keep their distance from Ben. He doesn’t know whether it’s because Uma doesn’t trust them not to hurt him, or doesn’t trust him not to try and win them over, or whether they just despise him. Uma is the only person who’ll really converse with him, and she’s sparing with her time. That leaves Gil, and Harry. At least Harry will talk to him. He’ll even joke with him – or at least joke about him in front of him. Ben’s never been sure that the great and good of Auradon weren’t joking about him behind his back, so having it done to his face is an odd kind of relief. As for the threats, Ben is hardly registering them anymore. Even if it hadn’t been for Harry’s obvious obedience to Uma, who has decided to keep Ben alive, there are only so many times you can have a hook thrust into your face before the novelty starts to wear off.

Carlos thinks that Harry is crazy enough to kill Ben out of hand in a fit of temper, orders or no orders. Ben disagrees. Harry’s decision to ally himself with Uma is such an obviously good one that Ben is judging him capable of all sorts of other good decisions off the back of it. In fact, he’s pretty sure that despite all the threats Harry is acting as something of a bodyguard for him, as well as a jailor, and Uma wouldn’t have given him that role if she didn’t trust him to carry it out.

‘I don’t think he’s really crazy at all,’ he’d reassured Carlos, as he was persuading his friends to accept her terms and leave him on the ship. ‘He’s just trying to scare us. When you visit us next we’ll be best of friends.’

He’s counting down the hours to their next parlay, because it’s desperately lonely being a semi-prisoner on this ship full of people who hate him. But at the same time, he’s pushing less and less for Uma to send him home, because he wants to keep her and Harry right under his eyes, to remind him of what he needs to do; what he forgot to do when they were out of sight and out of mind. The injustice of what Uma’s lost keeps him up at night; looking at her he can just see what she would have been like on Auradon: a princess, a negotiator, a leader of people. Harry, on the other hand, he can’t imagine being the same at all, and that’s almost worse. He may be terrifying, but he’s also a thing of beauty, and Ben can’t picture Auradon growing or containing anything like him. That means that there are good things his good country doesn’t know; good things that have grown up here on the Isle, without Ben, in spite of Ben. He supposes Mal is one of them. She let him have her for a while, but now he doesn’t know if she’ll ever take him back.

‘Take your time, don’t you?’ Harry remarks.

‘Almost done,’ Ben says. This is exactly why being supervised by Harry is preferable to solitude; he always pipes up just when Ben is starting to feel really sorry for himself. He crouches over the bucket and dunks his head, scrubbing hard at his scalp. When he tosses his hair back, cold tendrils of water start trickling down his spine, and he shivers. He’s pretty thoroughly chilled, and there’s no fire waiting to warm him up, no sun to bask in, nobody to sit close to and share body heat…

‘Done?’ Harry asks. He leans forward and gives Ben the once-over, eyes settling on his chest. ‘You look chilly.’

_Don’t roll your eyes_, Fairy Godmother would have trilled, but she isn’t here. Ben brings an arm up to cover his nipples, which are puckered with cold, and rolls his eyes hard.

‘Does his highness have everything he requires?’ Harry asks. Ben considers giving another eye-roll right on the heels of the first, because the questions and the false courtesy are really getting rather old. Of course he doesn’t have everything he requires. No hot water, no shampoo, no deodorant, and he’s getting straight back into his dirty clothes. But a week’s worth of jibes aren’t much revenge for a lifetime of unjust imprisonment. It’s his job to be the patient one. He follows his policy of responding to lose-lose questions with the truth.

‘I was hoping for a shave.’

‘Ah,’ Harry says. ‘Mm. Yes. You need it.’

‘Oh.’ Ben rubs a hand ruefully over the scruff on his face. ‘I thought maybe I was making it work.’ Harry gives him a thousand-yard stare and a slow shake of the head. ‘No?’

‘No,’ Harry confirms, getting to his feet. ‘Don’t worry, highness; we don’t have much on this ship, but we do have plenty of sharp things.’ He sashays past Ben to the other side of the cabin, where wooden storage cubbies line one wall. Ben turns to watch him, reaching down with one hand to hold his towel in place. That’s the body language that Evie tried to teach him, except that Harry makes it look like a form of dance. Ben hadn’t really had a hope of pulling it off. They don’t grow that kind of beauty on Auradon.

‘Let’s see…’ Harry is rummaging in the top cubby, handing down items onto the table. ‘Towel, brush, razor…and what’s this?’ He disappears up to the shoulder in the cubby, his face theatrically puzzled, then produces the last item with a flourish. ‘Soap! Aren’t we lucky today?’

So far, this is far more help than Ben had expected. Harry’s manner is positively chipper, which probably means Ben’s about to get the rug ripped out from under him sooner rather than later.

Harry picks up the razor and flicks it open one-handed, and the penny drops. Ben feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. There’s no logical reason for it; Harry’s always armed with sword, hook and dagger, and Ben assumes he’s deadly enough even without them, but seeing him pick up a length of sharp steel still sends alarm bells ringing. New weapon, new fear response.

He supposes he walked into this one, asking for something involving blades. He wonders what sort of pantomime they’ll have to go through before Harry finally hands him the razor and lets him shave in peace. He’s fairly confident that it will be a pantomime, and not an actual stabbing. Uma set Harry to guard him, and Ben trusts Uma.

He does not trust the way Harry is eyeing that bit of steel.

‘She’s a beauty,’ Harry says with a speculative smirk. ‘Everything a man could want, eh princey?’

‘I’m no expert,’ Ben says. ‘Is there a mirror?’

‘There is not!’ Harry declares. ‘But don’t worry; I’ve got you.’

He swings one of the wooden stools out from under the trestle table and indicates it to Ben, then turns back to the cubby to grab a fresh towel, which he slings over his shoulder. Ben doesn’t move.

Harry’s brain is always several layers of implication ahead of his, and Ben really, _really_ walked into this one.

‘Bring the water and sit down,’ Harry says, as if he thinks Ben didn’t understand the first time. Ben guesses this explains what he’s so happy about: the chance to taunt Ben right into his face instead of in passing across the room, and probably in a whole slew of new, shaving-specific ways as well. Ben’s stomach lurches at the thought. Appreciating the aesthetics of Harry’s walk from across the room is one thing. Ben has enough self-knowledge to suspect that being actually touched by him will be quite another. And when Harry notices that, he’ll be able to exploit it as well. If he hasn’t already. If he isn’t already.

He might also stab him with the razor, “accidentally” cut his throat with the razor, or injure him with the razor in all sorts of non-fatal but gruesome ways. Those really ought to have been Ben’s primary concerns, but they’re not. And Ben will worry about his order of priorities when he’s not staring down the barrel of Harry’s latest lose-lose situation.

‘I think I’ll shave by feel,’ he says.

‘Believe me when I say that’s a bad idea,’ Harry says.

‘A worse idea than letting an enemy near my neck with a knife?’ Ben asks.

‘Come on,’ Harry says, ‘I didn’t get to be first mate by cutting throats behind Uma’s back.’

‘No,’ Ben agrees, ‘but you might slip.’

‘I’ve got steady hands,’ Harry says. He gives the razor a couple of flips, and Ben tries not to flinch, because one slip and that blade is going to cut to the bone. But Harry doesn’t slip. ‘Not one nick on his highness’ face, I promise.’ Ben still doesn’t move. Harry tuts. ‘Do you think I offer to wait hand and foot on every guest we have on board ship? Dither any longer and I’m going to leave you to walk around looking like _that_.’

He makes a circling gesture with the tip of the blade, indicating Ben’s chin. Ben feels his cheeks heat up.

If he walks away now, Harry will know he was afraid. If he sits down, Harry will still know he was afraid, but at least at the end of it…hopefully…he’ll be clean-shaven. Which was what he wanted in the first place.

‘Alright. Thank you very much,’ he says, and sits.

‘Aw, you’re welcome,’ Harry says, and actually tousles his hair. It pulls, but Ben feels better the moment he sits down. He can’t stop Harry from mocking him, or cutting him, or seeing that he’s fascinated with the way he moves, and it’s easier when he stops trying. He’s here on the Isle to fix what’s wrong. The rest he can let happen.

Harry settles down on the other stool and begins to strop the razor. Ben swallows; that same instinctive reaction that all his belief in Uma’s power can’t quash. Harry catches the movement.

‘Sharper is safer,’ he says.

‘I know,’ Ben answers, because he _has_ used a straight razor before. Harry just turns his eyes back to his work with one of those barely-there sniggers, as though what Ben has said isn’t worth laughing out loud over. That makes Ben’s stomach do complicated things.

Harry finishes sharpening the razor and holds it up to the light, testing the edge with his thumb. His eyes flick from Ben to the blade and back again. Ben wonders if he could stop him if he lunged now. He wonders what Uma would do if she heard him cry for help. He hopes he’ll be able to keep from flinching when Harry comes at him with the blade, but,

‘Pass the water,’ Harry says with a click of his fingers, and of course there’s yet more waiting as Harry grabs the soap dish and the stiff-bristled brush and stirs the soap up into a thick white foam. 

‘Is that hard to come by?’ Ben asks, nodding at the soap, because the decision to relinquish control keeps getting overridden by the need to win it back, if only by showing that he can still talk.

‘Like hen’s teeth,’ Harry confirms, ‘but my captain has high standards.’

‘She thinks you look better clean-shaven?’ Ben asks.

‘That,’ Harry says, ‘and she has sensitive thighs.’

Ben actually feels his brain screech to a halt like a braking train. Individual neurones are piecing together what Harry means by that, and Ben wishes that they wouldn’t, that they would just leave him in the dark, but no luck. He’s slow, but he’s not stupid. At the same time as the image of Harry drawing his cheek slowly up Uma’s inner thigh is coalescing in his mind, Harry leans forward and applies the soapy brush to his face. The point of contact sears, and Ben knows he’s feeling entirely the wrong kind of fear.

‘I don’t think,’ he says, the words coming without his permission, ‘that a beard against your thighs would feel so bad.’

Harry’s brush hand pauses. ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about,’ he says.

‘Then why talk to me about it?’ Ben asks. Harry regards him for a moment, then smooths his smirk back into place and carries on lathering up his face.

‘So you’ve been showing little Mal a good time, have you?’ he asks. Ben stays quiet; he doesn’t want soap suds in his mouth, after all. ‘She’s been showing _you_ a good time?’ Harry probes. ‘Come on, which is it?’

‘It’s personal,’ Ben says.

Harry stares into his eyes for a long moment. ‘I can’t tell if that’s yes or no,’ he says at last. Ben says nothing. ‘I _can’t tell_,’ Harry repeats, like he’s really expecting Ben to give him an answer. Ben can’t help but quirk half a smile.

‘That other girl, then?’ Harry asks. ‘What was her name? Audrey? No, that kind wouldn’t let anyone near her without a ring, prince or no prince.’

Ben files away his surprise that villain kids pay so much attention to court gossip, and says nothing. Harry makes a disgruntled sound and turns his head roughly to the side to soap his other cheek.

‘You’ve got one hell of a poker face, princey,’ he says as he works.

‘It’s just my face,’ Ben says. He can see the thunder building up in Harry’s eyes and decides to give him something. ‘Anybody can imagine a sensation, can’t they?’

‘And that’s what you imagine, is it?’ Harry says, eyeing him appraisingly. The thunder dissipates a little. Ben’s surprised by the reaction. It feels like the closest thing to a victory he’s had so far. He tries to keep from smiling.

‘I just don’t see what’s wrong with beards, myself,’ he says.

‘Right.’ Harry sets the brush down and picks up the razor. He pulls his stool in until they’re bumping knees. ‘Well, if I ever go down on you I’ll be sure to build up a few days’ growth first.’

That’s the image Ben has in his mind when Harry leans forward, takes him by the chin and draws the razor across his cheek.

He understands the word _floored_ now, he thinks. The comment, the blade against his face, the casual way Harry’s reached out and grabbed him – any one of them would have been enough to silence him. He ought to be angry, or at least concerned, at the rings Harry’s run around him; instead he just wishes he could lean into his hand, because nobody has really touched him in a week. Not that that’s such a long time. Between the start of high school and the villain kids’ arrival nobody really touched him either, because you don’t rough-house with the crown prince. Kisses with Audrey always felt performed for an audience, visible or invisible. His classmates would do whatever he asks, which is why he doesn’t ask. He still remembers, crystal clear, the moment when he first stepped forward to greet Jay, and Jay put a solid fist into his shoulder to keep him back. _No_. And now Harry’s got a hand on his chin. He strokes the razor twice across Ben’s face, then adjusts his head to the right without so much as a _by-your-leave_.

‘Tense, aren’t you?’ he remarks. ‘I promised no nicks.’ He dunks the razor into the bucket of brine, rinsing it with a flick of his wrist, and goes in again.

‘I’m not worried about nicks,’ Ben says truthfully. The razor tugs uncomfortably – no hot water to soften his hair – but it doesn’t sting.

‘_Relax_, then,’ Harry says. When he’s this close, Ben can catch the lower timbres of his voice that he hasn’t heard before. He tries to keep his eyes on a point over Harry’s shoulder, but they keep drifting back to Harry’s face, because Harry is…enchanting to look at; there’s no other word for it, when he’s this close. His cheekbones are too pronounced and his eyes are too hollow, but Ben already knows enough to know that Harry would hate to be pitied for that, so he puts it out of his mind and focusses on the brilliancy of his eyes instead. His mouth is beautiful too; always open like he’s thinking about what he could do with it.

That’s a dangerous line of thought to be following when he’s wearing nothing but a very thin towel. Ben firmly tells his mind to go elsewhere. He concentrates on the rhythm of the razor working its way across his left cheek; two strokes and rinse, two strokes and rinse. The splash of the water, just outside his line of sight, is oddly soothing. Harry’s off hand is firm on his chin, turning his head the fraction by fraction he needs. Ben is acutely aware of the five finger-points of contact on his skin. He goes with the hand.

He didn’t choose to be a king, let alone king of an island prison. His life for the past two years has been a string of increasingly hard decisions about these things he didn’t choose. Now he can’t decide how to move his own head. It’s…

It’s rather nice, is what it is.

‘Lips together,’ Harry says, and leans in closer still as he manoeuvres the razor around Ben’s mouth. He’s working slowly, and it might be just to prolong this uncomfortable situation, but Ben rather thinks it’s because he’s sticking to his promise not to cut. It’s a show of skill, after all. Harry would never want it said that he’d injured someone _by accident_. In some ways, he’s not difficult to work round. Ben thinks that given a couple of years he might get the hang of it.

His eyes drift over Harry’s face again. As Harry tilts his head to see what he’s doing, his collar moves, and Ben sees a round mark, red and purple, on the side of his neck. His heart twists. He’s noticed that the pirates are often nursing cuts and bruises; defending the territory is a full-time job, and he feels sorry both for them and for whoever they’ve been fending off. Then he realises that he recognises that kind of bruise. Round shape, mottled colouring…

‘Did Uma give you that?’ he asks.

‘Hmm?’ Harry asks, pausing with the razor. He glances down, and his hand goes to his neck. He smiles, the smirk that he gets whenever Ben’s wrong-footed blending with something softer, slow and dreaming. It’s heart-stopping. Harry’s eyes come up to meet his.

‘_That’s personal_,’ he says. He taps Ben’s cheek to make him turn his head, and starts in on the right side of his face.

Ben takes a deep breath. The image of Uma biting Harry’s neck is suddenly blazing behind his eyes; the image of her bathing Harry in her attention and approval; the image of him being just as vulnerable to her as Ben is to him right now…

Harry glances from the razor to Ben’s eyes. Ben knows he sees how he’s staring. But instead of commenting, he looks away again, and that’s…interesting. Maybe Harry was expecting him to be more afraid, or differently. Maybe he’s uncomfortable with being stared at, for all he loves staring himself. Maybe Ben should stop staring.

He’s the not-exactly hostage here, he tells himself. If Harry changes his mind about helping him shave, he can always stop.

Harry has worked his way up to Ben’s ear. He trims the bottom of Ben’s sideburn, turns his head left and right to check for symmetry, and wipes a dab of shaving foam off his fingers on the towel over Ben’s knee. That touch makes Ben swallow, and he knows that Harry is watching for his reaction, but he still doesn’t look away. Harry gives a little scoff and nudges Ben’s head backwards.

‘Chin up,’ he says. ‘Trust me, you don’t want neck-beard.’ He half-rises off his stool and leans in close and now Ben is looking _up_ into Harry’s face; Harry is over him and holding his chin up as he sets the razor against his throat. After this, Ben decides, he’s going to sit down and reflect deeply on his response to danger. It’s not exactly new to him – when he met Mal, the thoughts ‘she looks dangerous’ and ‘she looks beautiful’ had come to him nearly one on top of the other – but getting hard when a self-proclaimed enemy looms over you with a blade seems a bit much.

Harry slides the blade up the side of Ben’s neck. It doesn’t hurt. Maybe, Ben thinks, it’s not the danger he’s responding to after all. Maybe it’s the safety. He’s afraid of this situation, but not afraid that Harry will hurt him. That thought sends tingles flooding down his neck and shoulders, and maybe he ought to cross his legs, look away, try to calm down, but he can’t see the point. He’s sure that Harry knows how he feels; that he engineered this situation because he knows. So he lets his skin light up with sensation and his eyes drink in Harry’s face, and Harry’s eyes stay on the razor.

‘Oh – !’ he says warningly, as he works round the curve of Ben’s jaw. ‘Careful now – there!’ He brings the blade away with a flourish and one of his slightly unhinged giggles. ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’

‘No,’ Ben agrees.

‘Let’s go again,’ Harry says. ‘Keep still.’ He’s so close that his breath gusts against Ben’s neck and ear, his warning is an implicit threat, and Ben grabs the seat of his stool with both hands to control the shudder that goes through him. ‘Keep _still_,’ Harry repeats gloatingly, but he takes the razor right away from Ben’s neck as he says it, and holds it away until the shiver is over, and that just melts Ben’s heart to see. And when he draws the razor up through the next line of hair, he’s still not meeting Ben’s eyes.

_I’m not afraid of you_, Ben thinks. _Nobody in their right mind could be afraid of you_.

When Harry lays the razor right over his jugular vein, though, it’s still heart-stopping.

_I like being afraid of you_, Ben adds to his other thoughts.

‘Feeling safe, your highness?’ Harry whispers. His mouth is open with concentration and curls at the corners. He’s got his hand against the side of Ben’s neck, his thumb under Ben’s jaw, pulling his skin taught. Ben lets his eyes fall shut, lets Harry position him for the blade.

‘Yes,’ he breathes, barely moving his lips.

‘Silly king,’ Harry murmurs, and Ben can _imagine_ how close he is now. ‘You’re a poor judge of situations.’

‘It’s like you said.’ Ben hauls his eyes open to meet Harry’s. ‘Steady hands.’

Harry makes a mouth and looks away first.

‘I think we’re done,’ he says. He turns Ben’s head and the razor this way and that, tidying up a few stray hairs. His off hand is all but cupping Ben’s cheek. ‘You’re fit to be seen again, your highness.’

‘It’s your majesty for a king,’ Ben tells him.

‘You’re a_dor_able,’ Harry drawls. He shuts the razor with a one-handed flick, sets it aside and grabs the towel. He wipes the last of the foam from Ben’s face, then runs the back of his hand against his skin, checking for any stubble he’s missed. He’s thorough. His hand brushes Ben’s cheek, his chin, his neck. Ben can feel the round smooth shape of his knuckles.

Harry’s hand finally stills, sideways in the groove of Ben’s chin, just below his lip. The touch is nothing and everything. Ben wonders what would happen if he brought his mouth down to meet the hand.

‘Not one nick,’ Harry says. He raises his eyebrows: _I told you so_. He takes his hand away and gets to his feet. ‘You look flawless.’

‘I’ll have to take your word for it,’ Ben says. ‘No mirror. For all I know you’ve left me a soul patch or something.'

Harry laughs. From the look on his face, Ben’s actually surprised it out of him.

‘Your majesty,’ he says, ‘you’ve actually had a good idea. Too bad it’s too late.’

‘That seems to be a pattern with my ideas,’ Ben says.

‘I don’t feel sorry for you,’ Harry says bluntly. ‘Just count yourself lucky I don’t have permission to hurt you.’

Ben blinks. He deserved that one. If there’s one thing he’s learned about the pirate crew, it’s that they all hate apologies, implicit or otherwise.

‘I know I’m lucky,’ he says.

‘Will there be anything else?’ Harry asks archly. It’s an open, plain-as-day, pitfall trap. Another lose-lose.

It’s been a week and a half since someone touched him. He doesn’t know if he and Mal are over or not, and he feels like fire is crawling under his skin, and the tiny part of him that isn’t as good as it ought to be has noticed the way Harry avoids eye contact when his bluff is being called, and wants to see what will happen if he answers.

‘A kiss?’ he says.

Harry blinks once. It’s a microsecond of surprise, but Ben catches it. Then he smirks, but there’s still a little hesitation mixed in there. Ben supposes that if an enemy handed you a weapon, hilt-first, you’d wonder what the catch was.

Harry casts an eye over him, expression turning thoughtful, and leans in. He plants his hand on the table beside Ben, bracing himself firmly, and it’s not a touch but it somehow feels more invasive than a touch, hemming Ben in, emphasising Harry’s strength. Harry’s eyes drop to Ben’s mouth, and he sucks musingly at his own lower lip as he stares. Ben’s stomach turns to water. He’s called Harry’s bluff; what’s he going to do if Harry calls his? What will happen if this beautiful man actually puts his mouth on him?

‘You might be mad,’ Harry says softly. ‘It’s a _kiss_ you want, is it?’

Ben looks up at him, and he can’t get a word out. Not _yes_, not _no_, not anything.

‘I’m sorry.’ Harry pulls away, his expression an apology, mocking and lovely. ‘I don’t have permission to do that either.’


End file.
